Appealing to the CRTC

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 12:53 PM - 0 Comments

Jim Flaherty blames an “oversight” for the fact that his ministerial title was included in his letter to the CRTC. The Globe finds two parliamentary secretaries who wrote to the CRTC with their titles noted and, with various backbench and opposition MPs writing to the CRTC, Duff Conacher wonders why any MPs are allowed to write such letters.

Public interest advocate Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch argues that section is ill-defined. He says MPs should not be picking and choosing which local companies they will help.

“I don’t think it’s proper for MPs to become lobbyists for individuals with specific interests,” said Mr. Conacher, who praised Ms. Dawson’s decision Friday but added that it calls for more clarity around the proper role of an MP. As it stands, Mr. Conacher said there is nothing to prevent MPs from giving favourable treatment to constituents who are friends or political supporters. “That’s trading favours,” he said. “They give preferential treatment to those who do more for them – either vote for them, raise money for them or work on their campaigns – and I don’t think that is the proper role of a member of Parliament.”

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 9:31 AM - 18 Comments

Ethics commissioner Mary Dawson wonders whether we might need a code of conduct for MPs.

Dawson said she regularly gets complaints from people who think politicians are abusing their positions or behaving inappropriately.

“Misleading statements, personal attacks and the like that come with the partisan nature of political life are often distasteful to many Canadians,” Dawson wrote in her reports on both the Conflict of Interest Code for MPs and the Conflict of Interest Code Act. ”Some assume that this sort of behaviour must be covered by one or another of the various accountability regimes in force. In fact, there is no comprehensive regime that governs political conduct in general.”

Good work, at times

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Thomas Northcut/GETTY IMAGES

While employment in Canada was up in December 2010, one perceived drawback was that the share of part-time workers also jumped. Full-time employment edged up a solid 1.9 per cent over the previous 12 months, but the rate at which the economy added part-time jobs was almost double, at 3.4 per cent. The proportion of part-timers in the working population has been on the rise since the mid-2000s, but the trend has accelerated in the past two years. Economists worry the high share of part-time workers, which neared 20 per cent at the end of 2010, is an unhealthy side effect of the recession. But while about a third of Canadians continue to prefer full-time jobs, according to Statistics Canada, there are signs that fewer work hours are becoming a matter of choice.

A 2010 Telus/Harris/Decima survey found that 89 per cent of Canadians report that offering flexible work hours makes an employer more attractive. After salary levels, the study revealed, it was the most important factor for employees looking for a new job. And creative work arrangements reducing time in the cubicle benefit employers too. In 2009, the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that 78 per cent of U.S. companies thought that offering so-called “flexwork” decreases turnover rates.

The rising ranks of part-timers can partly be explained by a jump in the number of older workers choosing to put off retirement. But it could also be a symptom of an increasingly gender-neutral job market, say experts. In the Netherlands, for instance, scores of young professionals are happily opting for four-day workweeks to dedicate more time to the little ones. And as “daddy days” are reportedly no longer taboo even in high-pressure, competitive environments such as law firms, working part-time is losing the stigma that made it by definition the choice of career-shy women in the past, reports the New York Times.

And as employers compete to attract talented workers—especially generation Y-ers—offering more part-time work options is becoming a must-have.

The great whale-in-jail debate

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 9:31 AM - 0 Comments

Andy Clark/Reuters/ Les Bazso/ Vancouver Province

When Qila the 2,000-lb. beluga whale twirls, alone in the water, waving her pearly white flippers for the crowd at the Vancouver Aquarium, no one is left uncharmed. The powerful predator has a gentle smile and a knack, it seems, for tricks. She’s magnetic: belugas are plastered on Vancouver buses, in newspaper ads, in magazines. Just getting past the aquarium’s front door can take well over a half-hour. Inside, Qila and her three beluga mates have a little under two million litres in which to roam. After an $8-million upgrade scheduled for completion in 2013, their pool will double in size.

That upgrade is coming with the help of $25 million in funding, announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell a few weeks ago in front of the blue-green tank. Ottawa’s $15-million share comes from its controversial stimulus spending fund. But there’s heat, and it’s not the Economic Action Plan that’s generating it. Weeks ahead of the announcement, Nala, the aquarium’s youngest beluga, died suddenly. A penny and some rocks were found lodged in her blowhole, igniting a local debate: should the aquarium keep beluga whales at all? Aquarium staff, many of whom rushed to be by Nala’s side the night she died, said the penny may have been tossed in by a visitor—proof, said Lifeforce founder Peter Hamilton, of the flaws inherent in “aquarium prisons.”

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Corporate Social Responsibility: recession proof

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

With the recession battering the pocketbooks of Canadians across the country, charitable donations took a nosedive. In fact, many charities are running out of cash just when they need it most. According to a survey by Imagine Canada, an umbrella organization representing charities and non-profit groups, 45 per cent of the 1,500 charity leaders polled between November 2009 and January 2010 said the economic downturn had led to an increase in demand for their services, but 48 per cent say they’re having difficulty fulfilling their mission and 22 per cent claim they could have to shut down operations altogether if their financial situation doesn’t improve. And the future doesn’t look any brighter: 51 per cent expect to have a hard time covering their expenses between now and next year.

When the going got tough, Canadians looked out for No. 1. But what of their employers—many of which spent the better part of the past decade touting their new economy bona fides and aligning themselves with causes like climate change and AIDS awareness? While some suspected corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives would be the first items to disappear from corporate budgets amid all the slashing, for the most part, companies stuck to their principles. “We didn’t see any let-up in sustainability programs at companies that already had them,” says Heather Lang, director of research products for Jantzi-Sustainalytics, which compiles the list of Canada’s Top 50 Socially Responsible Corporations. “If anything, there was likely an increase in programs.”

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Amid the stench of cronyism, Charest strikes a lousy deal with Jewish schools

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM - 14 Comments

The cynical side of Jean Charest has to be loving this controversy about the presence of French at the Olympics. It’s such an easy play for someone in his position: weigh in just enough to look concerned, but not enough to look like a grouch. Leave the heavy lifting to people like Réjean Tremblay, who was annoyed at the lack of French even before the Olympics started and who has since cranked up the outrage-o-meter to eleventy-billion, and Pauline Marois, who somehow imagines joining a three-day-old pile-on that’s doing perfectly fine without her is good politics.

But make no mistake—Charest needs this controversy more than anyone else, if only for the distraction it provides. The past two weeks have exposed a potentially devastating fact about his government: it is incapable of learning from crises. Nowhere is this more evident than in the special rules the Quebec government recently implemented to make life easier for ultra-religious private Jewish schools that openly flout the province’s education guidelines.

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Newsmakers '09: Stealing the show

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 6:43 PM - 2 Comments

Since political columnists are always right, Stephen Harper has only a few weeks left to resign from politics in disgrace before the New Year. Better hurry!

Or perhaps you don’t recall the spate of commentary at the beginning of the year to the effect that Harper, having survived the Great Weird Coalition Crisis of Late 2008 only by strong-arming Governor General Michaëlle Jean into proroguing Parliament, was so badly wounded he would soon be forced to skulk away onto the retired-politico rubber-chicken circuit. One presumes the authors of those predictions, who perch at certain Toronto newspapers, will not hasten to remind us as Harper heads into 2010 in uncontested control of his party, with the Liberals struggling to get off the ropes and tantalizing hints of Conservative growth in Quebec and in a few carefully selected ethnic communities.

Quit? Harper has a better shot than ever at the parliamentary majority that has eluded him until now. So how’d that happen?
Back in January the predictions of a hasty Harper retirement didn’t seem particularly outlandish. Harper was indeed disoriented. The 2008 election gave him a strengthened minority and left Liberal Stéphane Dion’s leadership mortally compromised. Somehow Harper managed to provoke an opposition united front that threatened to congeal into a coalition government. He survived that threat only to do what he has always done when he is bitter: lash out, this time against Brian Mulroney, whose Conservative party membership status became the focus of a brief, bizarre controversy sparked by Harper’s PMO spokesdrones.

What saved him, Harper tells his entourage now, was the economic recession and the climate of uncertainty it provoked. Canadians were worried, and to the amazement of Liberals still congratulating themselves for beating the budget deficit more than a decade ago, much of Canadians’ confidence on matters of economic management has transferred to the Conservatives. Michael Ignatieff, the new Liberal leader, announced he would force Harper to report periodically on the status of the multi-billion-dollar coast-to-coast cash dump known as the “fiscal stimulus”; Harper, barely able to believe his luck, cheerfully obliged. At times the Conservative “information” campaign has been lurid to the point of being ethically questionable, with Conservative MPs handing out jumbo cheques, some bearing the Conservative party logo, to municipal dignitaries.

The Conservatives are amused by any ethical debates their behaviour has sparked. They are satisfied with the results. From June to September, according to a senior Conservative source, public awareness that the Conservatives have “an action plan” for dealing with the global economic crisis vaulted from 20 to 49 per cent. One voter in two is an unusually high level of public awareness for anything any government does. And the Conservatives have only the Liberals to thank for making them launch the public awareness program.

“What’s worth remembering is that most of our progress this year has been through self-inflicted Liberal damage,” the senior Conservative said. “There haven’t been a lot of Stephen Harper evil-genius traps, except maybe the gun registry”—a parliamentary vote on a Conservative private member’s bill to eliminate the registry for rifles and shotguns, which split the Liberals and the New Democratic Party caucus—“and that was more about splitting the NDP than boxing the Liberals in.”

Perhaps the best news came in mid-autumn, when the Conservatives picked up a seat in Rivière-du-Loup, a Bloc stronghold in eastern Quebec, confounding the impression that Harper’s modest breakthrough in Quebec in 2006 might be the high-water mark of his success there.

What we have learned about Harper in the past year should be dispiriting to the Liberals. Each time an election has seemed likely, support for the Conservatives has risen. Economic uncertainty helps the incumbents, not their rivals. And there are many more corners of the country where the Liberals are uncompetitive than where the Conservatives are. By autumn, Harper was making guest appearances on Ottawa concert stages and Bollywood dance shows. He looks set to keep surprising Canadians for a while yet.

Lots for EC to investigate, maybe

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 9:54 AM - 45 Comments

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, UofO prof Errol Mendes has a good column arguing that the ethics commissioner has ample jurisdiction to investigate and pronounce on checkgate. While he’s kind enough not to denounce me personally, it’s a pretty straightforward rebuttal of my column from Monday

The core of Mendes’ argument is to foreground section 8 of the code, which forbids MPs from using their office to further their “private interests,” and then asserts that the Conservative party is a private entity, and should not be confused with the government. Thus, there’s a clear conflict.

I don’t agree with all of it, and I think the real question is how far we want to stretch the definition of “private interests”, given section five of the code, which reads: “A Member does not breach this code if the Member’s activity is one in which Members normally and properly engage on behalf of constituents.”

The fact is, most of what an MP does on behalf of constituents is aimed, ultimately, at getting re-elected. And in getting re-elected, the MP benefits his or her party. Which is a private interest. Hence, an MP should not do anything that could help him or her get elected. Right?

The larger issue then is whether we want to criminalize (or quasi-criminalize) behaviour that all politicians have done since the dawn of time. In many ways, it is the parallel to the argument that David Mitchell and David Paciocco advanced during Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien’s trial last summer: That if what O’Brien did was illegal, then every politician in the history of Canada is equally guilty.

That isn’t to say that anything goes; just that what is permissible is open to reasonable debate, and what the public or the opposition will tolerate is highly context-driven — which  means it might be properly dealt with in the political realm. The alternative is the inevitable politicization of Mary Dawson’s office, which is exactly what happened to Bernard Shapiro, and we all know how well that went.

All of that said, on the more narrow question of the Tory logo on the cheques, I think Mendes is right, that it probably does violate the Code of Ethics. I hope Dawson’s decision to investigate doesn’t lead to a flood of complaints from all sides of the House, in an attempt to turn her into Parliament’s scold.

The Commons: Bring it on

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 6:21 PM - 63 Comments

The Scene. Worried perhaps that his point had been lost amid yesterday’s unpleasantness, David McGuinty stood at the start of Question Period this afternoon and picked up approximately where he had left off the day before.

“Remember the facts,” he said. “One hundred million dollars of partisan propaganda without accountability, infrastructure funds distributed as if they were reward points and more than 60 investigations by the office of the Ethics Commissioner, a minister under investigation for his ties to lobbyists and federal agencies, a Conservative senator linked to key players in a scandal.”

Then, a simple-enough question. “When,” Mr. McGuinty wondered, “are the Conservatives going to clean up this ethical mess?”

The Prime Minister stood, buttoned his jacket, adjusted his left cuff and addressed the Speaker on another matter entirely.

“Mr. Speaker, this is a time of global economic recession,” he said, “but Canada’s performance exceeds that of many other countries and the measures of government are well-supported by Canadians and even the vast majority of provincial governments.”

This much had been said in French, the language employed for Mr. McGuinty’s first question. But, before sitting, the Prime Minister switched momentarily to his first language. “This question,” he said, “reminds me of the old saying: ‘When you throw mud, you lose ground.’”

So there. The Prime Minister returned to his seat then, entirely done dealing with the Liberals for the day. Continue…

If only we had a commissioner who was responsible for ethics

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 7:05 PM - 33 Comments

CBC explores the irony of news that the ethics commissioner will be investigating the ethics of giant novelty cheques.

Canada’s ethics commissioner will investigate dozens of allegations that Conservative MPs are using taxpayers’ money for partisan purposes. But Mary Dawson says she’s not sure how far her mandate allows her to go into ethical issues, despite her job title.

… in her annual report, Dawson highlighted that while the word “ethics” appears in her job title, it does not appear in the Conflict of Interest Act or the Code of Conduct for MPs. ”It’s quite unclear as to the extent to which my mandate extends into ethical issues that are not expressly referred to in either the code or the act and, in fact, one would wonder whether it extends there at all,” Dawson said at parliamentary ethics committee meeting.

Is a therapist allowed to do that?

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 9 Comments

Early on in the half-hour HBO drama In Treatment, Dr. Paul Weston, a therapist portrayed with understated aplomb by the Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, is seen struggling to unclog the toilet in his home practice. Soon, Laura arrives, an alluring 30-year-old anesthesiologist who insists both that she is in love with him and that he secretly loves her. “I am not a realistic option,” Paul tells her, addressing an infatuation common to psychoanalysis called erotic transference. Suddenly, Laura stands. “I need to pee,” she says. “It’s blocked up,” replies Paul. Laura moves to the door to Paul’s home, domain of his wife and children. Paul grows uncomfortable. “I bet that didn’t come up in med school—a patient in love with the therapist asks to use a bathroom,” says Laura. “What should the therapist do?”

Actually, the question rarely comes up. “This is why I have ambivalence about the show, it seems like there’s a career’s worth of ethical dilemmas in every season,” says Ryan Howes, an L.A. psychologist who groans each time an episode appears in his TiVo cue, so much does it feel like a continuation of his workday. “I find myself doing a lot of backseat driving.” Yet he’s hooked, as are many therapists, who hail the drama as the most accurate depiction of their work yet to hit movie and TV screens. At once cerebral and earthy—how often do TV plots turn on a toilet plunger?—as well as gloriously talky, In Treatment, now in its second season on HBO Canada, is as close to theatre as it is to the 50-minute sessions it so faithfully reproduces. And it’s at least as prone to hyperbole.

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A free press in a free market

By Andrew Potter - Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 7:20 PM - 1 Comment

Here’s the topic of discussion at a conference next week in Montreal:

If it bleeds, it leads.”

Yes, it’s a cliché. But it can often be an apt description of the way some media focus on the sensational. Intense coverage of celebrity adoptions or relationships, tawdry political scandals and graphic tragedy “sells,” and it sometimes overshadows the reporting of more pressing issues and events. While media institutions remain an essential instrument of democracy, they are also companies that sell content for profit. Are these two responsibilities contradictory?

It is being hosted by my old friends at CREUM. They’ve lined up a great list of particpants, including Darin Barney, Chris MacDonald (aka the Business Ethicist) and Daniel Weinstock. Here’s the programme. I’m giving a talk on the Saturday. The whole event is free and open to the public. Come on by.

Academic research laundering

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 6:00 PM - 10 Comments

Outspoken academic Ward Churchill is suing to get his job back. He claims he was let go because of his opinions on 9/11 (you’ll recall he called the WTC victims “little Eichmanns”) while the school says it was for academic misconduct, with offenses that include plagiarism and something that appears to be a form of research laundering. Under cross examination yesterday, Churchill admitted “that he had ghostwritten works for other scholars and occasionally cited them to support his own theories” — something that a faculty committee found clearly violated academic standards.

It gets better. One of the people for whom he ghost-wrote a paper is his ex-wife where he wrote part of her paper, and it was published under her name. Ok, so maybe it isn’t plagiarism, but the problem is that he subsequently cites the paper as an independent source in his own work. Here’s his explanation for why it’s not unethical:

Mr. Churchill said the practice violated no academic standard at the university. And he argued that it was acceptable for one scholar to ghostwrite for another and then cite that work in other writings as long as the second scholar embraced the original premise.

I’m not sure what to make of this — there is no second scholar.

IVF mix-up ignites ethical quandary

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

“Would you abort a fetus because it wasn’t yours?” This is the ethical quandary Slate writer William Saletan contemplates in this piece about a bizarre IVF mix-up that recently took place in a Japanese hospital, during which one woman ended up carrying an embryo belonging to another couple. In this case, the doctor got the dishes confused, and implanted three embryos, one of which belonged to someone else. The couple could not distinguish with any certainly whether the one that took hold was her own flesh and blood, and decided to abort the fetus. Now they are embroiled in a legal battle with the local government, claiming mental anguish. Meanwhile, the hospital maintains it only advised of the risks of postponing the abortion, but did not recommend that the woman terminate the pregnancy. To make matters more complicated, the other couple weren’t even told of the mishap until two months after the abortion.

Slate

The Greens enter Parliament — by the back door

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 11:38 AM - 0 Comments

Just when you think you’ve seen everything…

The Green Party now has has its first MP in Parliament, and it is a Liberal who had been turfed from that party’s caucus over election financing irregularities.

“Today we make history,” Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said Saturday in a news release in welcoming Blair Wilson of B.C.’s West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country riding to her party.

“I am grateful for Mr. Wilson’s principled belief that the Green Party deserves a voice in Parliament and for his firm commitment to democracy.”

A possible election campaign is looming, with signals indicating Canadians could be going to the polls in mid-October.

May noted in the release that with “a Green MP sitting in the House of Commons, it will now be impossible to exclude the Green Party from the televised leaders’ debates in the next election.”

More here and here and here.

Where the tired things are: Liveblogging Ethics After Dark

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:36 PM - 0 Comments

9:20:30 PM
Well, we’re back. Actually, we’re not officially back for another ten minutes or so, but the committee room is surprisingly lively. There are a few MPs here – Pat Martin, David Tilson – and the chair is already in position – as well as a full contingent of clerks, including the long-suffering Richard Rumas.

Ooh, and reinforcements on the Liberal side, in the form of Derek Lee. He and Szabo represent the parliamentary brain trust as far as the caucus goes — Jerry Yanover being the undisputed master of behind-the-scenes dark arts, of course — which means that the opposition side will likely be more lively when the inevitable procedural wrangling begins.

9:24:12 PM
Okay, this is getting somewhat unsettling; every MP who walks in and sees me says, with some amazement, “You’re back!”

Well, of course I’m back. I’m hardly going to cut out mid-filibuster. That would just be — wrong.

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Mr. Mulroney regrets …

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 11:21 AM - 0 Comments

At least he “respectfully declines” the invitation, and doesn’t just tell them to sod off, which is what I’m sure he’d like to do, but was advised against by the always serene Guy Pratte.

So what happens next? I guess we’ll find out at Ethics this afternoon.

Oh, and note how he refers to the “upcoming public inquiry.” At least someone still believes that it’s ever going to happen!

ITQ Committee Lookahead Thingy Update: Ethics committee cancelled!

By kadyomalley - Monday, June 2, 2008 at 12:03 PM - 0 Comments

… or, at least, the after-hours meeting to debate the Liberals’ in and out motion. Either that, or they’ve decided not to hold two separate meetings, and will go straight to committee business after hearing from the Canadian Bar Association on privacy reform, rather than start a whole new meeting at 5:30.

Conservative MP John Williams backs Thibault, parliamentary privilege, common sense

By kadyomalley - Monday, June 2, 2008 at 10:46 AM - 0 Comments

.. in a letter to the Hill Times, no less. I wonder if he’ll be able to persuade the more — reluctant members of his caucus — particularly David “Cranky” Tilson, who brought the complaint to Dawson in the first place — to consider the long-term ramifications of her ruling, and not just gloat over the fact that it was a Liberal whose wrist was slapped:

Mary Dawson’s unfortunate decision: Tory MP Williams
Re: “Dawson ruling puts Parliament in ‘crisis,’ says top expert,”
(The Hill Times, May 29, p. 1).

[...] Whether or not Mr. Thibault allegedly defamed Mr. Mulroney will be settled in court if it ever gets there. What is more important for Parliament is her definition of a “private interest.” For her definition she relied upon her legal experience, oblivious to the fact that she is now engaged to adjudicate in the public world of politics and democratic right of free speech. Nowhere in her report did she discuss the constitutional protection of freedom of speech in Parliament or even acknowledge that Members of Parliament have a duty to speak on issues of public concern. [...]
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It's 8:15 am: Do you know where your ITQ is?

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 8:36 AM - 0 Comments

Drinking a super-sized sugar-free Red Bull and preparing for another committee triple-header, of course.

For anyone interested in, oh, let’s see – Insite, ethics and/or Foreign Affairs, a quick preview of what we have in store for you here where democracy never sleeps, which is why it occasionally gets a bit cranky:
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Somehow, I suspect this isn't over.

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 5:39 PM - 0 Comments

As expected, the Speaker ruled that the latest report from the Ethics committee – which recommends that the Code of Conduct be amended so that a libel suit against a sitting member would not be considered a conflict of interest – was out of order, as the Code falls under the aegis of Procedure and House Affairs, and as such, cannot be taken up by another committee.
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Hurray for Pat Martin!

By kadyomalley - Monday, May 12, 2008 at 5:58 PM - 0 Comments

I have to admit that those are words that I really never would have imagined myself writing in that order, but what can I say? Absurdly unworkable rulings by well-meaning ethics and conflict of interest commissioners lead to strange bedfellows:

Notice of motion from Pat Martin

May 9, 2008

That the Standing House Committee on and [sic] Ethics report to the House that the Standing Orders of the House of Commons be amended so that in s. 3(3) of Appendix I, Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, the word “or” is dropped after the word “public” in subsection (b), and in its place the following words be added:
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The pause that refreshes in the corridors of power

By kadyomalley - Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 6:39 PM - 0 Comments

Oh, Carole Lavallée. During the Mulroney/Schreiber hearings, you became known to ITQ readers as the Voice of Sanity – now, here you are, successfully moving an entirely sensible motion condemning the Conservative decision to kill off the ATI request database. Really, what would the Ethics committee – or the rest of us, for that matter – do without you? I don’t suppose you’d be willing to reconsider that whole separatism thing, would you?

Carole Lavallée moved, — That Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the parliamentary Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics report to the House as its 6th report that it:

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